Antifrustrationism

Summary

Christoph Fehige proposed antifrustrationism, according to which a frustrated preference is bad, but the existence of a satisfied preference is not better than if the preference didn’t exist in the first place.1 In Fehige’s words,

We don’t do any good by creating satisfied extra preferences. What matters about preferences is not that they have a satisfied existence, but that they don’t have a frustrated existence.2

Several authors have objected to antifrustrationism. How could a proponent of antifrustrationism respond to these objections? If you are interested in doing research in this area, please contact us since we have unpublished material on related topics.

Out of these critiques, the most interesting ones are provided by Arrhenius in “Future Generations,” Ryberg, Danielsson, and Holtug. There are possibly other critiques; see citation searches, for example on Google Scholar for sources that cite Fehige, “A Pareto Principle for Possible People.”

Other related works

Karlsen, Dagfinn Sjaastad. “Is God Our Benefactor? An Argument from Suffering.” Journal of Philosophy of Life 3 (2013): 145–67. Ungated. Includes a favorable treatment of antifrustrationism.

Output format

Novel research: Article in a philosophy journal. Title suggestion: “In Defense of Antifrustrationism.”